1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a semiconductor testing apparatus, and more particularly to a semiconductor testing apparatus capable of performing constant acceleration testing and AC (alternating current) continuous operation testing simultaneously.
2. Description of the Related Art
The usefulness of semiconductor devices are rapidly increasing. Moreover, the applications of very dependable semiconductor devices have greatly increased also. Each semiconductor device must be exhaustively tested to guarantee their physical and electrical reliability. Two commonly performed reliability tests are a constant acceleration test and an AC continuous operation test.
FIG. 1 (prior art) illustrates a conventional constant acceleration testing apparatus. Semiconductor devices 4a & 4b are placed into holders 3a & 3b respectively. The holders 3a & 3b are attached to an opposing pair of arms 2a & 2b respectively which are connected to a main shaft 1. The main shaft 1 rotates about its center axis to generate a large acceleration which is applied to the semiconductor devices 4a & 4b through the opposing pair of arms 2a & 2b. The large acceleration is applied to the semiconductor devices to determine the physical integrity of the semiconductor devices. If the semiconductor devices are flawless, they will continue to operate as they were designed to operate.
FIG. 2 (prior art) illustrates a conventional AC continuous operation testing apparatus with like reference numerals designating corresponding parts in FIGS. 1 and 2. An AC power source 5 is electrically connected to at least one connection pin 6 of a plurality of connection pins on the semiconductor device 4. Power from AC power source 5 is applied to the semiconductor device 4 to evaluate the electrical reliability of the semiconductor device 4.
The normal procedure for testing the dependability of semiconductor devices is to sequentially perform the constant acceleration and AC continuous operation tests. However, due to the extraordinary increase in the rate of manufacturing semiconductor devices, the rate of testing the semiconductor devices has become unacceptably slow. Therefore, a queue builds up between the manufacturing stage and the testing stage which is an extremely inefficient manner to process semiconductor devices.
There has yet to be devised a semiconductor device test apparatus which expedites testing by providing numerous reliability tests within a single test device. The present invention overcomes the problem of relatively slow and inefficient testing of semiconductor devices by performing concurrent multiple tests on the semiconductor devices.